Suspicion falls first on the Peytons’ gamekeeper Allen Barnes (Clive Russell)
and his two daughters, one of whom is Clara Peyton and the other is a single
woman named Sass (short for “Saskia) (Charlotte Hope). Suspicion also falls on
the Colleys, husband Donald (Robert Morgan) and wife Bella (Anna Francolini),
who published Shane Thurgood’s first novel and paid his rent in hopes of
leaving him alone to write a second one — though they’re also under suspicion
themselves for tax irregularities writer Steve Coombes (whose script is based
on characters created by Ann Cleves — it’s often a bad sign when shows like
this are based not on the original author’s
stories but on ones cooked up by the TV producer’s own writers) doesn’t stop
his thriller plot long enough to explain. In fact, suspicion falls on a lot of people — like most British mystery writers,
Coombes tends to err in the direction of creating too many suspects rather than
(the American weakness) too few — and it’s hard to keep track of them all,
though at the end the killer is revealed to be Allen Barnes’ third child, son Louis (Aiden Nord), a queeny little
twink who was ridiculed by his dad and the Peytons for not being good at the
“stalking” game. He claimed to have seen the Emperor Hadrian but no one else
believed him, and when Shane challenged him while Louis was holding a gun, they
struggled, the gun went off and Shane bit the big one. I’ve seen better
episodes of Vera but the central character
is still a treat — as is Brenda Blethyn’s portrayal of her — and the show’s
producers had the smarts to surround her with good-looking guys, including her
assistant Joe Ashworth (David Leon, who alas left the show after this 2014
season) and a tall, striking-looking blond who works in Vera’s office and is
the only one who can successfully decipher Shane Thurgood’s manuscripts.